Seeking Common Ground in Tampa

I am leaving tomorrow to fly to Tampa for the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association Convention and the Final Four. Sadly, my Maryland Terps will not be making the trip so I have switched my allegiance to Stanford for the next week.

Last year at the final four in Cleveland I made contact with some women from the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and Athletes in Action during our time in the exhibit area. I wrote about it in my blog post on April 5, 2007, Reaching Across the Divide: Religion and Sexuality in Sport.” You can check it out in the index to the right.

We had a good conversation last year and all agreed that we would love to replicate our conversation as a formal program at the conference this year. We pursued this option and our proposal was accepted. We are scheduled to do a panel on Saturday morning in a 9:45 session at the WBCA convention. The FCA and AIA folks and I have been talking by phone several times over the last few months as we planned the session and we are all excited about it.

The panel will be Helen Carroll, Debbie Haliday, Donna Noonan, Lea Robinson, Tracey Wolf, and me. The session is entitled, “Seeking Common Ground in Athletics: A Conversation Among Lesbians, Christians and Christian Lesbians.” I’ll be blogging about the session so check it out in a few days.

I’m excited, a little nervous and am anxious to see how many folks attend and what their reactions will be. We’ve got an hour for the session and, since there is nothing scheduled in the room after out session, we plan to stay and continue the conversations with anyone who is interested. My goal is to start a dialogue about how lesbians and Christians on sports teams can all compete and coach together with respect even when we may have fundamental differences in perspectives about sexuality and religion.

Stay tuned.